The best advice on writing I’ve ever received was from Dwight Macdonald: “Everything about the same subject in the same place.”

JAMES ATLAS

 

The best advice on writing I’ve ever received is, “Knock ‘em dead with that lead sentence.”

WHITNEY BALLIETT

 

The best advice on writing I’ve ever received was probably something Ted Solotaroff told me years ago when he was my editor. Going over a manuscript line by line again and again he kept reminding me, “Remember, this is your book, not my book. You’re the one who’s going to have to live with it the rest of your life. I might publish 30 or 40 books this year, you’re only going to publish one, and probably the only one you’re going to publish in two or three years.”

RUSSELL BANKS

 

The best advice on writing I’ve ever received was from William Zinsser: “Be grateful for every word you can cut.”

CHRISTOPHER BUCKLEY

 

Best writing advice I’ve ever received: Sell everything three times.

MARGARET CARLSON

 

Best advice I ever got was from the Romanian poet Nichita Stanescu, who told me in Bucharest, before I emigrated: "Learn English. French is dead."

ANDREI CODRESCU

 

The best advice on writing I’ve ever received: “Don’t have children.” I gave it to myself.

RICHARD FORD

 

The best advice on writing I’ve ever received is: Don’t answer the phone.

PATSY GARLAN

 

The best advice on writing I’ve ever received is to take it seriously, because to do it well is all-consuming.

DAVID GUTERSON

 

The best writing advice I’ve ever heard: Don't write like you went to college.

ALICE KAHN

The best advice on writing I’ve ever received was, “Rewrite it!” A lot of editors said that. They were all right. Writing is really rewriting--making the story better, clearer, truer.

ROBERT LIPSYTE

 

Best advice on writing I’ve ever received: Finish.

PETER MAYLE

 

The best advice on writing I’ve ever received is: “Write with authority.

CYNTHIA OZICK

 

I think the best advice on writing I've received was from John Steinbeck, who suggested that one way to get around writer's block (which I was suffering hideously at the time) was to pretend to be writing to an aunt, or a girl friend. I did this, writing to an actress friend I knew, Jean Seberg. The editors of Harpers forgot to take off the salutation and that's how the article begins in the magazine: Dear Jean....

GEORGE PLIMPTON

 

The best advice on writing I’ve ever received was given to me, like so much else, by Hubert Selby, Jr.: to learn and to know that writing is not an act of the self, except perhaps as exorcism; that, in writing what is worth being written, one serves, as vessel and voice, a power greater than vessel and voice.

NICK TOSCHES